Posted by krschultz 4 days ago
Insurance IIRC is 3 highest in the nation. I'm paying $3000 per year with max limits full coverage and this is lower than most people I talk to.
Doesn't change the service outage piece, but it will get better.
That being said, your key point - people can do what they want in this thing and no one can really stop them, does stand.
1. operator or computer vision detects dirt in salon
2. route the autonomous vehicle to contracted carwash
3. return car back to service
4. charge customer for the cleanupUtterly disturbing announcements and rollouts like this aren't prominently linked with comprehensive testing videos.
"We're a tech company, just trust us"
The only thing I like about this is the potential to make Tesla look bad.
Do you think I care about the people IN the car?
Self-driving is about the safety of the people OUTSIDE of the car.
expensive, sometimes they sexually harass/assault the passengers, sometimes the drivers are also dangerously tired
> Or a bus (also driven by a human)?
slow (especially because USians oppose optimal stop spacing) and dirty, no door-to-door air conditioning, not separated from poor people
It’s slow because it must solve for many possible routes. Cabs are point to point. A rideshared cab, moreover, knows ex ante where its customer is going and, in a city, where its next customer is.
Because the humans in New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco frequently cancel rides, get lost, drive unsafely, pitch me on their religion and smell. (They also must be tipped, at which point the Waymo is the same price or cheaper than the human-driven ride.)
When I have the option of a robotaxi, I pay a premium for it. It’s novel. It’s fun. But most importantly, it’s safe, punctual and comfortable. Otherwise, I'm fine taking a human-driven car. Having more options makes those cities a better experience.
How I wish I was in a Waymo right now! I've never had remotely such a poor experience in a SF robotaxi.
This caused them to increase the driver pool beyond the point of competence. That, in turn, required degrading customer service to the point that if I actually need help I have to use the flow that says I was in an accident or raped.
Waymo is neat as a robotaxi. But the reason it wins is they seized the nationwide premium market, a beachhead Uber (and paradoxically also Lyft) left undefended.
We all know trains would be nice. Unless you have some plan to rework our government into something that will allow for innovation here, then I prefer to see progress, even if it's not ideal.
It's a dumb comment. But I find it interesting in how it reveals opportunities to leverage bridging expertise.
The infamous Dropbox comment [1] illustrated the complete lack of domain knowledge in marketing, sales and generally how non-tech people work that was commonplace among coders. A lot of people made a lot of money, and made a lot of other peoples' lives better, but bridging that gap.
This bus meme, on the other hand, illustrates a complete lack of domain knowledge around marketing and, in all likelihood, how governments and public transit work in the real world.
However, before that problem is solved, maybe solve mass-transit from the airport to the strip first?
And that could work, if the car in front can communicate power/brake/turn commands to the cars in the chain. And if you could dynamically drop cars out of the middle when needed. And if you could dynamically add cars when they're neighboring and going the same way. All those could be tricky, but they seem quite solvable.
There are so very many opportunities for a better surface transport system than buses. Dynamic routing and scheduling, capacity somewhere between a city bus and a taxi, and potentially better economies of scale all make this far more appealing than what exists today.
Also – and I know acknowledging this will not go over well in some circles – requiring an app and a credit card will go a long way toward keeping riders of a certain disposition off the vehicles. No, it's not a perfect proxy for who will and won't make riding unpleasant or unsafe, but riders will intuitively understand it even if they don't want to think about it, and it will make a difference.
Anyone who knows something about transit already knows this is false. the idea has been tried and failed for hundreds of years. What people want is predictable transit that is there when they want to go and gets people places in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody cares about other stops.
People hate dynamic routing because it means they never arrive at the same time and in turn they can't use transit at all unless they plan to arrive way too early. Most trips are time sensitive, that isn't just the trip time, but also they have to be someplace at a specific time.
People hate dynamic scheduling because it means they can't take spontaneous trips. They can't be late for their planned trip. They will miss the bus once in a while because something didn't go to plan.
What people want is predictable routes that run so often they don't need to look at a schedule. They can figure out how to navigate it. Places people want to be will figure out those routes and location where it is easy to get to.
Okay, what people really want is Star Trek style teleportation. The point is to be someplace fast, not the journey. This is impossible though, so we compromise. the best compromise for transit is frequent systems that run predictable routes.
> But it misses the social context
Funny how their entire social context is "never encounter another human as you go from A to B"
It's funny. It's also dumb. An observation can be both at the same time--it's a cornerstone of humor. What it isn't is fundamentally true or revealing.
> their entire social context is "never encounter another human as you go from A to B"
Nope. It's recognising that humans have diverse and varying needs for interaction and privacy.
I like to dine out, even alone. That doesn't make everyone who eats at home alone an idiot. (That doesn't mean I can't make jokes about it. But they shouldn't be mistaken for truth.)
Well, they are not a solution to transport problems, or to traffic jams.
Yes, they can be complementary to other types of transportation. Yes, companies will enshittify them beyond measure if/when they reach a certain proportion of cars.
> It's recognising that humans have diverse and varying needs for interaction and privacy.
No. I don't think this was even uttered by any of these companies.
Waymo claims to be committed to safety: https://waymo.com/about/
Tesla: stress and safety https://www.tesla.com/fsd
Zoox: purpose-built taxi shaping the future of transportation https://zoox.com/about
Nor to world hunger.
> companies will enshittify them beyond measure
A hypothetical applicable to every mode of transit, private and public.
> don't think this was even uttered by any of these companies
Things can be true without being in a corporate press release. (Also, you're the one who originally argued these services' "entire social context is 'never encounter another human as you go from A to B'." If not being in a press release is an argument against one, it 's an argument against the other.)
Though, in this case, it has been said: "Waymo gives you your own personal space to focus on more meaningful things" [1].
Ah, the good old ad absurdum.
These companies literally hail themselves as "future of transportation".
> A hypothetical applicable to every mode of transit, private and public.
These are private companies looking for profit. These are not hypotheticals given what is happening to other cars and car manufacturers.
> Also, you're the one who originally argued these services' "entire social context is 'never encounter another human as you go from A to B'."
These are literally robo taxis. A taxi is literally a car that is taking you from A to B. And they are also removing the driver from them. Oh, and don't forget the existing of things like Boring Co. which exists almost solely to undermine public transport.
Their intended future is nothing but endless roads with isolated vehicles going from A to B. There's no other "social context".
I already commute by train. I’d like to have something more flexible.
https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/uberx-share/
Convergent Evolution happening in realtime- it's almost as if community pooled forms of transportation are the most efficient...
I've tried the current basic share option and it's not great, and I say that as someone who used pre-pandemic UberPool. You typically don't save much off a standard UberX ride, it's only available for exactly one person, the arrival estimates are wildly optimistic, and if the other rider isn't in the car they seem to never be ready when you get to their pickup location.
It's unfortunately, but the current pricing model seems to attract passengers who really don't want to be paying for an Uber but at least this way they can save a couple of bucks, which means they're typically in a stressful situation. Very different vibe from the old, social and wildly cheap UberPool, but that probably was never sustainable.
No it wouldn't. Those hotel shuttles and taxies are ideal for anyone with luggage as you don't have to carry your own heavy bags with you. The train doesn't want those people slowing things down for everyone as they get all their bags on/off the train.
Airport lines are a good idea because many thousands of people work at airports and thus don't have luggage. They are also useful for travelers taking a short trip and thus don't have much packaged. However Vegas as a vacation destination is expected to have a lot of people with luggage and less people who are light travelers.
Once tourists drop their bags in their room they should be using transit for every trip until it is finally time to return to the airport.
Of all the places to try a gimmick, Vegas is the right place.
Yes, that's why they call it the Las Vegas strip. It is an entire city literally designed for tourists.